


Pull the Trigger

by Nochi



Category: Power Rangers (2017)
Genre: Gen, alien spaceship repair for dummies, spot the original series reference
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-28
Updated: 2017-04-28
Packaged: 2018-10-25 03:28:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10755789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nochi/pseuds/Nochi
Summary: The Rangers complain about having to constantly dive through the water to get to the ship when Alpha offhandedly mentions the broken teleporter.





	Pull the Trigger

**Author's Note:**

> A commission from worldoftherandom on Tumblr! I used their request as the summary.

                                “Ugh,” Zack complained, shaking off like a dog as they entered the ship’s interior. “I’m gonna have to start keeping a change of clothes down here or something, this is gross.”

“Same here,” Jason said grimly, peeling his wet shirt off and wringing it out on the cave floor. “My dad’s starting to wonder about all the laundry.”

“Do we have, like, lockers or something?” Kimberly squeezed water out of her hair. “Where’s Alpha, I’m gonna ask him about lockers.”

Trini walked ahead of them and silently reached into one of the wall struts they’d hidden in the first time they’d found the ship. When she stepped down, she was holding a duffel bag.

“That’s smart,” Billy commented from behind them.

“People can’t say no if you don’t ask,” Trini said sagely, though there was a gleam of mirth in her eye.

“I’m still gonna ask about lockers,” Kimberly said after a pause, and headed for the control room.

                “Why, are you moving in?”

“No, it’s just really uncomfortable to have to come in and out through the water and sit around in wet clothes all the time,” she explained patiently. “So if we could keep a change of clothes down here that would stay dry…”

“Is water a problem for humans?” One optic focused on her. “I thought you were made mostly of the stuff.”

“It doesn’t _hurt_ , wet clothes are just uncomfortable.” Trini, leaning against the wall in her dry outfit, thought she could actually see the edges of Kimberly’s nerves fraying the longer the conversation went on.

“Well, I mean, if the teleporter was operational, you could use that, but it’s not, so…” He dragged the last word out in a way that heavily implied there was nothing to be done, and they should just deal with it.

“Wait, teleporter?” Jason strode forward from where he’d been accumulating a puddle of lake water.

“Yes, there used to be a teleporter on the ship, but it was damaged in the whole meteor thing.” Now Alpha sounded impatient.

“Can it be fixed?”

“We’ve been here since your entire species was barely more than a suggestion of the cosmos,” Alpha shot back. “It’s not like we can just run it out to a…” The lights in his optics whirled for a moment. “ _Mechanic,_ ” he finally finished.

“We could fix it,” Zack said. Alpha turned to stare at him.

“Not to doubt Master Billy’s skill, but…you five. Fix a millennia-old, completely alien ship?”

“Just one part of it,” Kimberly amended. “Besides, Billy’s good with the ship, right?” She looked back at Billy, who was nodding along already.

“If you help us,” he added, gesturing at Alpha.

“And we won’t drip water on your floors anymore,” Jason put in.

“And everybody’ll stop bitching about wet clothes,” Trini added from the back.

“Okay, not everybody has a Boxcar Children bag packed and ready to go,” Zack returned. He grinned as he said it, but Trini’s face went hard and she looked away. He suppressed a little sigh – Trini had gotten easier to talk to since Rita and Goldar, but it was still pretty hard to guess what was going to push the wrong button with her.

“Alright, alright, fine, come on.” Alpha started down the long hallway. “But if you end up purging the drive core and blowing a hole in the planet I don’t want to hear _one word_.”

                The teleporter looked vaguely like a diesel engine, which excited Jason, and was brimming with circuits and obscure wiring arrangements, which made Billy’s eyes light up, and Alpha unearthed a cylindrical sort of toolkit from somewhere. The three of them swarmed the device, Billy asking questions almost faster than Alpha could answer them.

“So which part’s actually broken?”

“The reintegration matrix, here – “

“It’s all scorched – “

“Yes, hence me saying it was _broken_ – “

“So reintegration is what puts you back together after – “

“After the molecular disintegration process that allows teleportation, yes – “

“Yeah, that’s gonna need fixing. “

Alpha backed away, throwing his hands in the air in exasperation, and Kimberly stifled a giggle.

“Is there anything those of us who haven’t built a computer from scratch can do?” she asked. Alpha tapped a metallic finger to his chin thoughtfully.

“A lot of the circuitry has just been affected by time,” he admitted. “Contacts need cleaning, basic maintenance sort of stuff. There’s just only so much a robot and a big face can do, you know?”

“Could the ship fly again?” Jason asked, looking up from where he was holding his phone’s flashlight up for Billy. Alpha was quiet for a long moment.

“Possible,” he said softly. “But very unlikely. The most practical hindrance is this mountain on top of us – it’s still been a very long time since any of those systems were booted up. And then there’s fuel, and, well.” He trailed off, not looking at much of anything, and the others were worried he’d stalled out for a moment.

“Well?” Trini prompted when the silence went on too long.

“The last time it flew, there were six of you.”

                They all shared a look at that, and even Billy’s hands stilled on the wires he was holding. They’d all thought about it, of course, talked about it a little when the memories weren’t too raw, but the fact was that there had been a sixth ranger before, and now there wasn’t.

“We’ll focus on the teleporter for now,” Jason said softly. “Everything else is just blue-sky thinking, anyway.”

                So they trooped out to the ship every afternoon and weekend, alternating between training and getting a crash course in spaceship repair from Alpha. Billy and Jason stayed hunched over the teleporter, learning alien words that translated into things like “screwdriver”. Trini, Kimberly, and Zack took small handheld devices to portions of the metal that had given over to rust, watching the metal reform before them. Alpha revealed a large chamber that had almost entirely rusted through, and Zack took to hanging in a sling from the ceiling. They knew when he’d finished a section from the wild whoop he gave as he swung to the next affected area.

Trini, when she wasn’t cleaning or training, took to sitting near the ongoing teleporter repairs, a worn paperback in her hands. The book went mostly ignored, though, as she eavesdropped on the proceedings.

“So after we get this working,” Jason said, handing Billy a soldering iron. “How do we get there?”

“Well, before, it was tied to the Rangers’ physiology,” Alpha said. “I _might_ be able to reprogram it to recognize ‘human’, but, well, there are so darned _many_ of you now.”

“Yeah, we’re gonna need to be a little more specific,” Billy said from halfway inside the console. “Can we tie it to the coins?”

“Those are highly sophisticated devices,” Alpha responded, sounding almost aghast. “You can’t just go hooking them up to everything. Not to mention, experimenting with teleportation is incredibly dangerous.”

“We could use inanimate objects,” Billy countered.

“Could we?” Jason asked.

Alpha gesticulated wildly as he responded. “These have only been used for Rangers! Living creatures only! I don’t know _what_ sending inorganic material through it would do!”

“Lab rats,” Jason suggested. Trini failed to repress a snort, and all three of them looked over at her. “What?”

“Are you just gonna go to a pet store and tell them you need a dozen rats to send through an alien molecular disintegration device?” She closed the book, laying it against her crossed legs. “Just use me.”

“Sorry, what?” Zack’s voice was loud in the hallway as he and Kimberly came from the sparring room. “Did I hear you correctly?”

Trini flipped him the bird without looking around. “I’ll test it for you,” she said. “When you’re sure it’s working.”

Alpha’s optics swiveled on their stalks. “That’s incredibly dangerous, Trini!”

“What, and fighting a forty-foot gold golem in an overblown Voltron knockoff wasn’t?” she shot back.

“Crazy Girl,” Zack muttered, and she did look back then, giving him a scathing look for the old nickname. “What? This _is_ crazy.”

“Welcome to the Power Rangers,” she said, standing and shoving her book into her backpack. “We eat crazy for breakfast. I gotta get home, my mom’s gonna flip if I’m late again.” And she stalked out of the ship, towards the cave mouth.

“Something’s up with her,” Jason sighed, kneeling back down beside Billy.

“Something’s _always_ up with her,” Zack groused, dropping his de-rusting tool into the toolbox. “But she’s right, it’s getting late. Hit me up when you get that thing working, Billy.”

Billy said something, rendered unintelligible by the casing of the device.

“We’ll let you know,” Jason translated, and Zack and Kimberly went the same way Trini had.

                They, however, headed up the path to the town, where Trini had leapt into the lower branches of a nearby tree, waiting to see them leave. When they were well past her, she dropped down, heading back through the water (it really wasn’t that bad, honestly) into the ship.

And right into Jason.

“Oh, shit,” she muttered. “Sorry.”

“I thought you said you had to get home,” he said, tilting his head at her.

“I…I left my book,” she said, trying to move past him. He stepped back into her path.

“No, you put it in your bag before you left,” he said gently. “Trini, talk to me.” She glared at him, at the floor, at her hands. “Come on. I thought we were past the silent treatment.”

“Just because we’re friends now doesn’t make talking about shit magically easier,” she said explosively. “I never talked to _anyone_ about _any_ of this before, okay, and it’s not like I don’t _trust_ you guys, it’s just…” She trailed off, let out a hard breath through her nose. “I sleep here sometimes,” she said finally. “Most times. It’s…” Another hard exhale, and she wasn’t looking at him, focusing on the cave wall somewhere past his head. “Rita attacked me in my house, okay? She just came in like it was _nothing_ and jumped me in my sleep. She could have killed me just as easily as – “ Her mouth snapped shut. They didn’t talk about that.

“I get it,” Jason said quietly after a moment. “You feel safe here.”

“I guess.” It was a mumble.

“And you want the teleporter to work so you can get here faster.”

“Maybe.” The same mumble, with her hair falling in front of her face now so he couldn’t see her clearly. He smiled fondly, thumping her on the shoulder.

“It’ll work. Billy’s smart, and the ship likes him.”

“Don’t say it that way, a ship that can _like people_ might be my upper limit for weirdness.”

He laughed, the sound coaxing a smile from her. “Go on,” he said after a minute, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

She directed that smile at him as she walked past, then paused.

“Jason?”

“Yeah?” He was under the wall of water, half-crouched for the jump.

“You can tell them. It’s probably better if they know where to find me. You know, in case of whatever.”

He nodded. “Cool. I’ll do that.”

And, with a grimace, he jumped up into the water, leaving her to shove her hands in her pockets as she walked away. If she couldn’t see them, she didn’t have to admit they were shaking.

                                “You’ve been living here?”

“Not _living_.” Trini gestured at Kimberly with her chopsticks. They were seated in the console room with takeout, which had become a regular occurrence lately. “Just sleeping. I…I get nightmares.” The last was said into her lo mein. Telling Jason had made saying the words a little easier, but she still had trouble looking at people when she said it.

“Is that not normal?” Billy asked. “’Cause I get those, like, all the time.”

“I think we all do,” Jason agreed. “But Rita went in her _house_ , y’know?” Trini was grateful for that, too; with someone else saying it, it seemed less like her just being hysterical, even to herself. Especially to herself.

“So yeah. I sleep in here. And yeah, that’s why I wanna make sure the thing works. It’s good if we can all get here quickly, anyway.”

“I’m getting close,” Billy said excitedly. “I just have to work on the trigger function, but I’ve got some ideas about that…” And he went off on a technical explanation that they all nodded along with, while having very little idea of what was actually being said.

Trini privately gave a small sigh of relief. She had been so sure the others would think she was weird(er) for having a giant alien ship as her comfort object. But it had barely even been a conversation topic. Oh, it might come up later, but the hard part was over with.

Well, mostly. Billy still had to get the teleporter working. And she still had to test it.

She stared at her food for a long moment before making a noise of disgust at herself and eating a huge mouthful of noodles.

                                “An app.” Jason arched at eyebrow at Billy’s exuberant proclamation.

 “Yeah! I took the language the ship’s systems use and managed to write a go-between for the OS on our phones – good thing we all have the same kind, _that_ would have been a pain in the – well – anyway, I got it to show me the options for the teleporters and stuff. It was all in Zordon’s language, but I got Alpha to translate it for me, and after that it was just a matter of changing the interface to where the teleporter is the only option, ‘cause if there’s an emergency we don’t need to be going through forty-five different menus to get to – “

“Billy,” Jason said kindly, cutting the other boy off. “I get it. You did good.”

“If it works,” Zack muttered dubiously. He was eyeing Trini as he said it, who already had the app on her phone and was staring at it from against the wall.

“It’ll work,” Billy said defensively.

“I believe you,” Jason promised. “Zack’s just, well. He’s worried.”

“We all are,” Kimberly added, casting a glance of her own at Trini.

“How does it work?” Trini asked, not looking up.

“You have to be outside the ship,” Billy said. “If you’re inside the ship the location detection gets confused and you can’t be in two places at once. I’m gonna work on a thing later where you can choose an outside location if you need to, this is like a version 1.0.”

“And I just hit this?”

“That’s it.”

“Trini,” Alpha said from behind them, making them all turn. “I have to tell you again, this is really, _really_ dangerous.”

“Lots of things are dangerous,” she said flatly, sticking her phone in her pocket. “I’ll head to the mine. Then at least if I don’t show up back here, you know where to go looking.”

“Be safe,” Kimberly called after her. Trini waved over her shoulder, and they all settled in to wait.

                It was nearly an hour later when Zack, who had been pacing back and forth in the teleporter room, slammed a fist against the wall. (The wall resisted; the ship had been built to accommodate the enhanced strength of the Rangers, after all.) “I’m going to look for her.”

“I’m sure she’s fine,” Jason said, trying to sound like he believed it.

“It’s like a half-hour to get to the mine from here. Less if she goes full-out. Something happened.”

“Zack, dude, calm down –“

The room filled with blinding white light, making them all shield their eyes, and when it faded there stood Trini, alive and whole, with her face screwed up tight. After a moment she opened her eyes, seeing the others circling her, and a huge, brilliant smile broke out on her face.

“It worked!” Billy cried, jumping up and down and clapping his hands.

“It worked!” she echoed, and the others jumped up to hug her, which she was surprised to find she welcomed, chalking it up to euphoria. Alpha came up behind the throng, shooing them aside, and shoved a small handheld scanner at her.

“I’m _fine_ ,” she insisted.

“Your vitals say differently,” he shot back. “Heartrate’s through the roof.”

“I’m _excited_ , you sentient can opener.” She feigned a kick at him. “And...fine, a little scared.” Her grin didn’t fade, but did turn a little sheepish. “It’s what took me so long. Forcing myself to pull the trigger.”

“It’s a button,” Billy protested, frowning.

“I should have gone with you,” Jason said immediately. “I’m sorry.”

“Shut up,” was her only response, and Jason smiled at her a little.

“Phones!” Billy crowed. “Gimme your phones, this is going on all of them!”

                Jason, his phone having been snatched away by Billy, leaned in to hug Trini. “Proud of you,” he muttered into her ear, and she smiled at him as he pulled back. Not the euphoric grin of before, but a small, genuine smile.

“Billy did all the work,” she said, looking away.

“Not what I meant.” He returned her smile. “You pulled the trigger on a couple of things lately. And they both took you a while.”

“…shut up.” But she was still smiling as she said it.

In the background, Billy’s voice filtered in. “I already know what my next project’s gonna be, Alpha showed me where the flight stabilizers are, and if the ship’s not gonna fly I could totally hook them up to a car engine, I’m gonna make a flying car you guys.”

“Oh jeeze,” Jason muttered, going to retrieve his phone from Billy, and Trini just found a wall to lean against for a second. Yes, her heart was still pounding, and yes, there was a lot of _weird_ going on. But here, in this room, with these people…she’d never felt safer in her entire life.


End file.
